Introduction

Welcome to GolfCap. If your’e an avid golfer, you probably know how complex the
handicap system is and just how many numbers go into determining your golf
handicap. That’s where GolfCap comes in. It helps you track your golf
handicap correctly and calculates all of the numbers involved so you’re free to
enjoy your game. As for the numbers, there are 9 that relate to a single round of
golf:

Your Prior Handicap Index. This is the number that most people think of
as the Handicap. It's a measure of your potential score over par on a
course of average difficulty on a good day. For example, a golfer with
an 18 handicap index will likely shoot bogey golf.

The Course Rating. A measure of how hard the course is for a par
golfer. It is provided for you on your score card.

The Slope. A measure of how much harder the course is for a
bogey golfer than it is for a par golfer. It is also listed on your score
card.

Your Course Handicap. This number determines how many strokes you’ll
reduce your score by on a particular course if you're playing competitively with
handicap scoring. It allows golfers of different abilities to compete against
each other fairly, and varies with every round of golf you play. It is calculated
from your handicap index and the slope. Even if you aren’t playing with handicap
scoring, you’ll need to know this number because it’s used to calculate
number 5...

Your Maximum Strokes Per Hole. This is how the handicap system
prevents blow up holes from over-inflating your handicap index. When reporting
a round’s score to the handicapping system, it must be adjusted so that no
hole’s score exceeds this number. If you don’t have this number calculated
correctly with each round, you can easily record the wrong scores to your
handicap.

Your Score. The raw, unadjusted score you shot on a round.
For example, if you shot a 12 on one hole after going out of bounds a couple
of times, it is, unfortunately, a 12. It’s the score that counts in competition.

Your Adjusted Gross or "ESC" Score. Your score after knocking down
your blow up holes to your maximum, from step 5. If your max per hole is 8, for
example, that 12 from going out of bounds gets reduced by 4, as does your total
adjusted score for the round. This is the score that counts toward your handicap
index. (FYI: ESC stands for Equitable Stroke Control.)

Your Differential. This is the fairest measure of how you played
a round. It’s takes into account your adjusted score and the rating and slope
of the course to come up with an adjusted over par number. It takes your current
skill level and the course’s difficulty into account, so a high score on a
brutally tough course can have a much lower differential than a low score on a
course with few hazards.

Your Handicap Index. This is your new handicap index as a
result of this round. It is also the number that will be used as your
prior handicap index (number 1 above)
for the next round that you play.

Again, all that is for a single round of golf. The handicap index in item 9 is
calculated as a function of up to 20 of the past differentials, where the system
choses a number of your best rounds depending on how many you’ve played total.
It’s not the easiest system to get right without help.

GolfCap helps keep all of this straight on your mobile phone, which you’ll
probably have with you on the golf course. It calculates what it can right
there on the spot, and helps with the steps you have to do by hand. You’ll get
instant feedback while still on the course, so you’ll know how your current
round effects all your numbers. GolfCap can give you an unofficial handicap
index for your own personal use, or help you make sure your official handicap
is correct. It also provides you with useful graphs of your progress as a golfer.

When You First Launch GolfCap

When GolfCap is first launched, it displays a welcome screen that lets you
navigate to the most common functions when you're just starting out.

Ideally, to get started you will need to add as many of your old scores as you can.
This may sound daunting, but GolfCap has a trick to speed up
text entry for golf courses that you played repeatedly. Ideally you would enter
at least the past 20 rounds to
get the most accurate results. If you don't have any of your old score cards,
you can just wait until your next round of golf and start building up a
handicap index from there. Adding rounds is described in the next section.

Adding a New Round

Press the plus sign button at the top right of the List View screen (described in the
next section)

Select "Add a New Round" from the menu on the List View screen

This brings up the Golf Round Editing screen:

At the top of the screen, you'll find "Your prior handicap index" (item
number 1 from the list in the introduction). This section of the screen will display
more of your handicap related numbers as they become available. Initially the
handicap index shows a blank symbol, "--". Technically, you do not have a
handicap index until after you have submitted 5 scores.

Tap on the "Course Name" field under the heading "Course Information".
This will bring up a text entry screen. Enter the name of the course,
including the name of the 18 holes you played if the course is larger than
18 holes (for example, "Torrey Pines South Course") and press "Done".
On future uses of this screen, a list of courses you have already entered
will display below the text entry field making this step faster for courses
you play more than once.

Tap the "Tees" field. Since the rating and slope of a golf course is
different for each tee box, it is important to record from which tee box
you played this particular round. This will bring up a text entry screen
much like the screen for the "Course Name", only this one will be pre-populated
with a list of the most common tee box colors:

Tap the name of the tee box you played if it appears in the list, or
enter a new tee box name in the text field above and press "Done". If the
keyboard is covering part of the list, you can type the first letter or two
of a tee box name and the list will be filtered by names that start with those
letters:

Note that any custom tee box names you enter by hand will appear in this list
in the future to speed up entry. For example, you might play a course with
Burgundy or Platinum tees frequently (as opposed to the usual Red, White
and Blue), so these tee box names will continue to appear in your list.

Do the same for the "Course Rating" and "Slope" (items 2 and 3 from the introduction).
These values can be found on the scorecard.

At this point the information at the top of the screen will be updated to
reflect your "Course Handicap" and "Max strokes per hole" (items 4 and 5 from the
introduction). You'll need this information for the next step.

Tap "Score" under the "This Round" section. Enter the raw score that you
recorded on the score card (item 6 from the introduction).

Using the information provided by the "Max strokes per hole" at the top of
the screen, reduce your score by the number of strokes over max you shot on
any holes this round. Tap "Adjusted (ESC) Score" (item 7 from the introduction)
and enter this number.

If the round you are entering was not played today, tap "Date played" and set
this to the date this round was played, to the best of your recollection.
The date doesn't have to be exact, but historical rounds do need to be in the
correct chronological order. Once you go above 20 rounds played, the oldest
rounds will no longer be used in calculating the handicap index. If the
dates aren't exactly right but are in the right order, the correct round
will fall off the back.

At this point, the "Differential for this round" (item 8 from the introduction)
is calculated for you and appears in the top section of the screen. In order to
commit these changes, hit "Done" at the top of the screen.

Once a round of golf is committed, the new handicap index (item 9 from the
introduction) is
displayed at the top of the List View screen. After entering your first round,
this will display as a blank symbol “--” and will remain blank through your
first 4 rounds. Once 5 rounds have been entered into the system, a number
rounded to the nearest tenth will appear here.

List View of All Rounds

Most commonly you will want to view the List View of all your golf
rounds. All of GolfCap's features can be reached from this one screen. You
can add new rounds, edit existing rounds, look at the numbers discussed in
the introduction for any particular round, and view charts of your scores,
differentials and handicap index over time. All of GolfCap's features can be reached by
clicking on the Menu button (≡) at the top left of the screen.

Here's what the List View looks
like for someone who usually shoots in the 90's in the Portland, OR area:

Entering Scores on a Course That You Have Played Before

Most people have a home course where they play most often, or a
handful of local courses that they play repeatedly. GolfCap makes it easy to
record scores at courses you've played more than once.

Just as when you record a score at a course for the first time, press the plus
sign from the List
View screen to add a new round. Tap
the "Course Name" entry field and you will be presented with an alphabetical
list of all courses (with tees, rating and slope) that you have played before.

You can then scroll through the list to find the course, tees, rating and slope
that match your current round. Or you can enter the first couple letters of
the course name and the list will be filtered by courses that start with
those letters:

Select the matching row, and all the information for this golf course
(tees, rating and slope) will be filled in for you.
All you have to do is enter the "Score", "Adjusted (ESC) Score" and
"Date played", and you're done.

On the Golf Course, the Day of an Actual Round

Now that you've recorded all your historical rounds of golf, it's time to take
GolfCap onto the course.

When you get to the course and grab a score card, hit the plus sign from the List
View screen and enter the "Course Information" section of the
Golf Round Editing
screen. It will tell you your "Course Handicap" for this round, which you
will need on the first tee if you are playing competitively with handicap
scoring. It will also tell you your "Max Strokes per Hole", which you can make
a note of on your scorecard so you can keep both your raw score and adjusted
score if you like. Press "Done" to commit the course information.

At this point, the newly created round of golf will be color coded in red in the
List View:

This is to remind you that the information for this round is incomplete. It's
supposed to be incomplete, because you can't know on the first tee what your
final score will be.

When you complete your round, you can enter your score right there beside the
18th green and see immediately what the differential for this round is and,
after pressing "Done" to commit the scores, see what your new handicap index is.
In the List View, this round will no longer be red, but instead will be color
coded to show if this is a "good" round, or a "not-so-good" round.

Greens in Regulation: Count all greens reached in two strokes less than par.

Chips: This is a judgment call, what you consider to be a "chip" versus a "pitch". Chips count toward your "short game" strokes in the charts, so count any stroke that is used to (try to) get on the green from nearby as opposed to strokes used to advance the ball toward the green.

Putts: The total number of putts in the round.

The optional information will show up on the List View. The stats will appear below the score in color coded icons: from left to right, Fairways in orange, Greens in Regulation in green, Chips in yellow, and Putts in blue. Additional, the trend of your stats can be viewed in the Charts.

Color Coding in the List View

Golf rounds will be displayed in the List View in one of four colors. The
color of the background tells you how that particular round factors into the
handicap index calculation. Those colors are:

White: Signifies a "good" golf round, one that is used in
calculating the current handicap index

Light gray: This is a "not-so-good" round, one that is thrown out
in calculating the current handicap index

Red: An incomplete round. This is a round for which not all of
the relevant information has been provided. The rating, slope or adjusted
(ESC) score may be missing. This round is not (yet) used in the calculation of
the current handicap index, but may be once the missing information is
provided. This is not an uncommon state for a golf round to be in, as you
may enter the course information at the start of a round and defer entering
the score until after the round is completed

Dark Gray: This round is not one of your 20 most recent, so is
not included in the calculation of the current handicap index

Charts

GolfCap provides charts to let you see how your scores, handicap index and stats have
progressed over time. The charts can be reached from the List View screen by
pressing the "Show Charts" button at the bottom of the screen.

When the phone is held in portrait view, the top of the screen provides a
selector of the different charts available. A miniature version of the graph
appears below the selector.

In order to view the graph in full size, simply turn the device to landscape:

Version 2.2 of GolfCap sports 10 different charts, most of them involving the new
optional stats. All charts show the actual data either solid or dashed, plus the
trending average in a fainter, dotted line.

In all charts involving "Differentials", your "good" rounds (the differentials that are used in the
calculation of the handicap index) are marked with a circle. The "not-so-good"
rounds (those that are thrown out of the calculation) are marked with an "X".

Also note in all charts the data are displayed from most current on the left to
least current on the right, which is different from most graphs that show
time progressing from left to right. It is displayed this way because the
most recent information is the most important so appears first. If more than
20 rounds of golf have been recorded, the older rounds that are not used in
calculating the handicap anymore are off the screen to the right. You can
view them by scrolling the graph right to left. Another thing that is opposite of most
charts is that "good" is toward the bottom of the chart. This is because in most cases
in golf, a smaller number is better. However, higher numbers for Fairways and Greens in
Regulation should lead to lower scores, so for those stats the higher numbers are toward
the bottom of the chart.

When you are done viewing the charts, you can dismiss them and return to the
List View screen by pressing the "Done" button at the top left of the screen when the
device is held in portrait view.

Exporting and Importing Your Rounds

GolfCap provides an Export/Import feature to allow you to share your rounds
of golf across more than one device (eg. your phone and your iPad). The feature
is email based, so an Export of your golf rounds can also serve as a data backup
in your email inbox.

The Export and Import features can be reached from the List View by clicking
the Menu button at the top left of the screen.

In order to Export your golf rounds, press the "Export Rounds" menu choice. This
will bring up an email client with the Export of your rounds pre-populated as
the message of the email. All you
have to do is supply the "To:" recipient of the email, most likely yourself,
and hit send.

Importing golf rounds is a little trickier. It's necessary to copy the
contents of an Export email from the Mail app, then paste it into the Import
screen in GolfCap. First, launch Mail and display the message containing your
Export. It will have the subject heading "GolfCap Export". Touch anywhere
in the message of the email for a couple of seconds, and menu choices to "Copy" or
"Select All" will be displayed. For exports from version 2.2 and beyond, the information
will be in JSON format, and will start with a square bracket followed by a curly brace "[{".
You can click "Select All", then "Copy", then continue with the instructions following the images below.

For exports from prior to version 2.2, it is necessary to drag the blue pins marking the ends of the copy swipe to the very
beginning and end of the email message. The message should start with a date
in "yyyy-mm-dd" format (eg. 2012-03-08 in the figure below),
and end with the tag "".
Once the whole message is highlighted, press "Copy".

Once the contents of the Export email are in your device's clipboard, launch
GolfCap and navigate to the Import screen. Press your finger in the text area
below the label "Paste Export Email Here:" for a couple of seconds.
This will bring
up a button to Paste the contents of the clipboard. Hit "Paste", then hit
"Done". GolfCap will return to the List View screen with all the golf rounds
from the Export email added to your list. GolfCap does its best to merge
the data on the Importing device with the data from the Export and resolve
duplicate golf rounds. In rare instances, there may be conflicts that the app
will not catch (especially if stats have been added to an existing round on one device
but not another). It is always best to do a spot check after an Import and
make sure everything looks correct.

Questions, Comments, Bug Reports, Suggestions

Please let us know how you feel about GolfCap. If there is a problem, please
let us know and we'll fix it in the next update. If you love GolfCap, we like
hearing that too (and we'd appreciate your ratings in the App Store!). You can
contact us on our contact page.